Moving Plans of the Elderly: A Test of the Stress-Threshold Model

The aim of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical model for the explanation of moving plans among elderly persons. This model of moving behaviour of the elderly is more or less similar to the ‘residential satisfaction model of relocation’, developed by Speare, and consists of three sets of variables: (1) background characteristics (personal characteristics, discrepancies with regard to several housing and neighbourhood characteristics, and social bonds); (2) level of housing and neighbourhood dissatisfaction; and (3) moving plans. The main feature of this model is the intervening role of the two dissatisfaction variables: it is assumed that the background characteristics influence the levels of housing and/or neighbourhood dissatisfaction, which in turn affect the moving plans.

In order to test this model, covariance structure analysis is utilized among a sample of elderly residents in two districts of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Although the results support the residential mobility model to a large extent—the levels of housing and neighbourhood dissatisfaction act mostly as intervening variables—some unexpected findings emerge. In addition, the percentage of unexplained variance in moving plans is relatively large. For this reason, a number of suggestions are given to extend the theoretical model towards a better explanation of moving plans of elderly persons. One of these suggestions, that is, including the appropriateness of the dwelling in the near future as an intervening variable, is tested. It is shown that this factor plays an important intervening role, which implies that the elderly do not consider to move only because they are dissatisfied with their living conditions at the moment, but that those who expect their house to be inappropriate in the short term are more inclined to move. Therefore, in future research on the moving behaviour of the elderly it is necessary to take this anticipatory behaviour into account.